Upgrade to HD-PVR Problems - Help!

[eopian]

Originally Posted by SkierHiker

5. And last but worst, SageTV's playback of H264 video is horrible compared to WMP or VLC. All my recordings (TV and Home Video) play back with considerable stuttering. Non-HD plays just fine. With SageTV HD playback, my CPU goes crazy (80-100%). But with WMP or VLC, it's very happy (30-50%) and plays nicely. I'm thinking of starting a new thread on this one because it is SERIOUS. If I can't get it working, I may have to ditch the entire HD thing and that would be bad.

Your computers/video cards look a little underpowered for h.264 playback in Sage. I tried for a long time to get hardware acceleration working in sage (version 6 at the time) and windows xp with an AGP video card (Ati HD3650) and I got no where. I think with windows 7 you may be able to get hardware acceleration working with a different codec. Before Sage had support for the built in Windows7 dtv-dvd codecs, I bought the CyberLink h.264 codec (http://www.cyberlink.com/store/hd-26...buy_en_US.html) for Windows and it works very well with version 6 and hardware acceleration.

Another solution would be to upgrade your clients to extenders ($150 for the HD300 or maybe cheaper for older versions on ebay). I have 3 STX-HD100's and they play content from my HD-PVR's brilliantly.

[SkierHiker]

Whew! Past midnight again. But I got it all working. Figured out AC3Filter too. I had to uncheck everything except AC3, then adjust the Gain up to the right point (+15). That brought the audio volume up close to my non-HD videos. I'll do some fine tune tweaking later. Just curious though, is it possible to have multiple adjustments for different codecs?

Also, I got the HD videos (TV and Home) running fairly smoothly. All I did was change the video decoder from Microsoft to ArcSoft. Don't ask me why Microsoft wasn't working when it works for most everyone else. Do I need to apply the Native Recording Patch or was that just for SageTV 6? I'm still eating CPU cycles though so I think I still need to look at whether I'm using the GPU or not. Not sure how to do that though.

Now here is one question I have. Why do my HD videos play so well in WMP and VLC with little CPU and then max out the computer and barely play in SageTV? What is SageTV doing? Would very much like to understand more.

Thanks for everyone's help this last week. It was fun, interesting, and enlightening but at the same time it was crappy, frustrating, and tiresome. Would I do it again - absolutely

[UgaData]

I have been using the Arcsoft codec almost since I got an HDPVR and loaded the TME software. It hasn't always been pretty. This may or may not be your issue but this is what I found using the Arcsoft codec.

Every so often (usually due to me not leaving well enough alone) I will start getting jittering, stuttering, just not great playback of recorded video.

I eventually found that some hardware acceleration (DXVA1 & DXVA2) had been turned off in the Arcsoft Video Codec properties. I used GraphStudio to view the properties of the codec and turn on the HA.

I have posted about this in other threads as well. I have yet to determine what causes the HA to get turned off but it has happened more than once. There is also some effect on shows being recorded while I concurrently watch a show with the HA turned off due to the high CPU utilization.

[SkierHiker]

Originally Posted by UgaData

I eventually found that some hardware acceleration (DXVA1 & DXVA2) had been turned off in the Arcsoft Video Codec properties. I used GraphStudio to view the properties of the codec and turn on the HA.

I'm new to GraphStudio. Could you explain how to turn on HA? I think that may be the same problem I'm having with my graphics card.

Edit: I figured it out and ArcSoft sure made a nice properties page. However I enabled both DXVA1 and DXVA2 and clicked Apply but when I open it back up they are unchecked. Does this mean that the ArcSoft Video Codec can't do hardware encoding for H264? I ran a DXVAChecker program and the output looked like this:

NVIDIA GeForce Go 7900 GS

ModeMPEG2_IDCT:...................................DXVA2,...NV12, 720x480 / 1280x720 / 1920x1080
ModeMPEG2_MoComp:..............................DXVA2,...NV12, 720x480 / 1280x720 / 1920x1080
ModeMPEG2_A:.......................................DXVA1,...NV12, 720x480 / 1280x720 / 1920x1080
ModeMPEG2_C:.......................................DXVA1,...NV12, 720x480 / 1280x720 / 1920x1080
ModeVC1_MoComp:..................................DXVA1/2,NV12, 720x480 / 1280x720 / 1920x1080
ModeWMV9_MoComp:...............................DXVA1/2,NV12, 720x480 / 1280x720 / 1920x1080
ModeVC1_PostProc:................................. DXVA1/2,NV12, 720x480 / 1280x720 / 1920x1080
ModeWMV9_PostProc:..............................DXVA1/2,.NV12, 720x480 / 1280x720 / 1920x1080
1720AC81-9D1B-4F63-9A37-4A88483D0B87: DXVA2,...NV12, 720x480 / 1280x720 / 1920x1080
ModeH264_MoComp_NoFGT:...................... DXVA2,...NV12, 720x480 / 1280x720

I'm assuming that the ModeH264_MoComp_NoFGT is the H264 decoder? And it doesn't show 1920x1080 which is 1080ip?

I think I'm way out of my league here. Any help would be most appreciated.